From 0-2 To Super Bowl: Quantify A Giant Miracle

The Giants run to the Super Bowl comes as a big surprise to most observers, not so much because the team was unspectacular in most regular season victories, but because the squad looked generally horrible during some of their losses.

In fact, after getting thumped by the Packers in week 2, some questioned whether the Giants had the worst defense in franchise history.

But as the Giants poured onto the field tonight to celebrate their revenge over the Packers, and the naysayers, my thoughts turned to numbers -- Had any other recent Super Bowl teams overcome such a rotten start?

In a post at that time, I had noted that history shows that 0-2 teams only have a 1 in 10 chance to make the playoffs -- I never even thought to calculate how many had made the Super Bowl.

Going back ten seasons to 1998, I found that the other 19 Super Bowl teams had started the year a combined 33-5, and averaged outscoring their early opponents by 20 points over those first two games.

While there was one Patriots team that also overcame 0-2, they lost those games by just 13 points, compared to the Giants -32.

More remarkably, none of the 19 other defenses gave up anywhere near the 80 points yielded by the Giants in weeks 1 and 2.